An Urban Afterlife

Aspiring to empty myself of information
The city carves me up with an orbit of
Advertisements, carcinogens, plastics

I am afflicted – rehearsing my escape
Where on the Earth can I leave it?
Modern life injures my spirit

Like a repetitive cognitive stress fracture
Of too much schizophrenia & separation
This world has chosen a kind of doom
*
Without volunteers, for needless kindness
I want a simple life, like fruit ripening
Before you eat it on a Sunday morning

Aspiring to coax myself back into balance
The city trespasses over my congruity
With an excess of competition

For wealth and breeding, for a restless
Workaholic’s lifetime of drudgery, slavery
I am stripped of my humanity a bit more
*
Year by year, till I reach my thirties
With hardly dream or innocence –
We believe the lies they tell us, until
We begin to tell ourselves the same lies.